Arnie Duncan’s Hunt Institute is working with MO Lawmakers to bring in SEL.
Hunt Institute’s HK Fellows are listed as Ashcroft, Kehoe, Fitzpatrick, Bean, and Arthur. Obama’s Ed Sec., Arnie Duncan, is the Chair of the Hunt Institute. Why are they all working together?
What is HK Fellows?
A division of the Hunt Institute in which “Equity is the lens through which we view all of our work,…”
Equity.
“Matters of equity and inequity have always been at the core of The Hunt Institute’s work,…”
Hunt Institute was started by former Democrat Governor from North Carolina, Jim Hunt.
Left: Jim Hunt, Center: Arnie Duncan (Obama’s Secretary of Education.)
Left: Jim Hunt, Right: Jeb Bush
Arnie Duncan, Obama’s Secretary of Education and Mr. Common Core, is now the Chair of the Hunt Institute. That should be enough right there to cease all activities with the Hunt Institute.
It is unclear who brought them to Missouri, but Jay Ashcroft is the first cohort listed.
There have been many meetings organized and facilitated by the Hunt Institute over the years for Education policy in Missouri.
In late 2022, Missouri legislators Basye, Arthur, Eslinger, along with Kehoe and Ashcroft co-chaired a Legislative retreat.
Recently, the Hunt Institute facilitated the Blue Ribbon Commission meeting between the Missouri State Board of Education, Missouri Department of Secondary and Elementary Education (DESE), lawmakers, and various “stakeholders” to force SEL into the State Standards as we are seeing now play out in the rule making process.
Tomorrow, 10/17/23, the State Board of Education will review the over 600 public comments of the new K-12 SEL State Standards rule making.
The survey for public comments was done online and draws concern that it was not the best way to get verified real public comments of Missouri taxpayers.
If the new “rules” pass via a vote by the State Board of Education tomorrow, on 10/17/23, then the next step is JCAR (Joint Committee on Administrative Rules) in which Senator Nick Schroer is Chair, and House Representative Alex Riley is Vice-Chair.
Please contact Schroer and Riley and ask them to reject the new SEL rules.
You can find out more about SEL and the actual proposed new standards under the rules in this author’s previous substack.
🚨🚨🚨Call To Action - REJECT SEL in MO State Ed Standards!!!
On Tuesday, August 15th, Missouri State Board of Education approved to start the process of the Rule-Making change to add SEL (Social Emotional Learning) for K-12 mental health training. The time for the public to reject SEL Standards is now through public comment period ending September 15th.
What else can you do? Ask the HK fellows (Ashcroft, Kehoe, Fitzpatrick, Bean, etc) why they are working with a progressive out of state NGO and bringing them to Missouri to guide our Education policy.
The Hunt Institute looks like a lobby org to me.